There has been a lot of chatter on the net about the future of search and in particular for website owners and SEO companies, whether they are going to be able to continue to achieve rankings in the Search Engines – or Are Rankings Dead?

To understand this issue better you need to be aware of three big changes that are affecting search results in Google and other top Search Engines right now and are rumoured to be the way of the web from mid 2009 onwards.

Personalised Search
(also known as Behaviour Based Search)

Google led the charge in providing personalised search results to its users based on their previous search history. With Google if you are logged into a Google Account while searching, the results that are returned to you are based on previous searches that you have made and more weight is given to websites that are likely to interest you. More information is available in our previous post.

This behaviour based searching is already in play with internet advertising as advertisers track your online activity (via cookies on your machine), build a profile and deliver advertising targeted to your needs and wants. 

The feeling is that this type of activity will spread throughout the net and that other Search Engines will be delivering their results in this way – indeed the larger Search Engines are already trialing this new technology.

Localised Search
(incorporates Intent Based Search)

We talked in a previous post about localisation of search in relation to gaining rankings in Country specific Search Engines.

These days your location (what country you are in when you search), the location of your website (where it is hosted) and the TLD of your domain name (ie .co.nz, .co.uk) are all factors in serving up websites that are relevant to a user.  Google already employ this search technology and other Search Engines are following suit.

The assumption is that given your location your intent is to receive results that are relevant to that location.

Universal Search

In 2007 Google announced their move towards universal search:

"The Company will incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources – including videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites – into a single set of results. At first, universal search results may be subtle. Over time users will recognize additional types of content integrated into their search results as the company advances toward delivering a truly comprehensive search experience"
Source: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/universalsearch_20070516.html

(Over the past 7 or 8 years Google has acquired more than 50 companies that specialise in such areas which means they have ready sources of data to call on.)

Shortly after this announcement Ask.com, Microsoft Live and Yahoo all rolled out their own versions of Universal Search.

The overall result is that Search Engines are all moving towards displaying multimedia results in search results.  The impact on website rankings in this regard could be immense.  It is considered that if a website does not take advantage of different media types within its pages it may begin to lose its share of rankings as the competitors that do incorporate multimedia into their sites gain from this.

So, back to our original question – “Are Rankings Dead?”…

We don’t believe so but we do feel that owing to the shift mentioned above, the days of being able to get definitive website rankings are numbered. There will, however, always be a need for competitor analysis, keyword research, best practice optimisation and popularity building techniques and website owners will need to consider the incorporation of different media types into their websites to be effective in Universal Search.

We predict that determining the effectiveness of a website in the future will come down to sound traffic analysis through web server logs and analytic packages.